Lahey Named Semifinalist for Campbell Trophy

HANOVER, N.H. — The National Football Foundation (NFF) & College Hall of Fame today announced the 147 candidates for the 2012 NFF National Scholar-Athlete Awards, presented by Fidelity Investments®, and Dartmouth offensive lineman Patrick Lahey (North Andover, Mass.) was among those chosen for the honor. The 147 nominees also comprise the list of semifinalists for the 2012 William V. Campbell Trophy, endowed by HealthSouth, which recognizes an individual as the absolute best football scholar-athlete in the nation.

Schools are limited to one nominee, who must be a senior or graduate student in their final year of eligibility, have a GPA of at least 3.2 on a 4.0 scale, have outstanding football ability as a first-team player or significant contributor, and have demonstrated strong leadership and citizenship. The class is selected each year by the NFF Awards Committee, which is comprised of a nationally recognized group of media, College Football Hall of Famers and athletics administrators.

Lahey, a sociology major with a 3.37 GPA, is back in his familiar role as a starting guard on the offensive line after sitting out the 2011 season with an injury. The three-time letterman was pegged as a Preseason All-Ivy Second Team selection by College Sports Madness this year after starting all 10 games as a junior in 2010. He was an integral part of the front five that yielded just seven sacks the entire season, the fourth fewest in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), plus helped pave the way for Nick Schwieger to become just the fourth player in Dartmouth history to rush for 1,000 yards on his way to sharing the Ivy League’s Bushnell Cup as the conference MVP.

Lahey is one of 35 candidates that plays at the FCS level and one of three Ivy League candidates. A member of the Delta Chi fraternity, Lahey has served as the house manager for the past two years and was responsible for improving the physical structural integrity of the house by directing $15,000 worth of renovations last year to uphold local building codes. In 2010-11 he was a member of the Project Right Choice program, Dartmouth’s only student-run non-profit group which raises $100,000 annually on behalf of charitable foundations. Lahey is also a recipient of the Arthur O. Duhamel, Jr. 1917 Scholarship, awarded annually for superior athletic, musical or artistic talents and strong academic performance.

The NFF Awards Committee will select up to 16 recipients, and the results will be announced via a national press release on Thursday, October 25. Each recipient will receive an $18,000 postgraduate scholarship, and they will vie as finalists for the 2012 William V. Campbell Trophy. Each member of the 2012 National Scholar-Athlete Class will also travel to New York City to be honored Dec. 4 during the 55th NFF Annual Awards Dinner at the Waldorf=Astoria where their accomplishments will be highlighted in front of one of the most powerful audiences in all of sports. One member of the class will also be announced live at the event as the winner of the Campbell Trophy.

Named in honor of Bill Campbell, the chairman of Intuit, former player and head coach at Columbia University and the 2004 recipient of the NFF's Gold Medal, the award comes with a 25-pound bronze trophy and increases the amount of the recipient's grant by $7,000 for a total post-graduate scholarship of $25,000. A total distribution of $300,000 in scholarships will be awarded at the NFF Annual Awards Dinner, pushing the program's all-time distributions to more than $9.8 million. Launched in 1959, the NFF scholar-athlete program became the first initiative in history to award post-graduate scholarships based on both a player's academic and athletic accomplishments. The Campbell Trophy, first awarded in 1990, adds to the program's mystique, having previously honored two Rhodes Scholars, a Rhodes Scholar finalist, two Heisman Trophy winners and five first-round NFL draft picks.